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Melting ice to expose contaminated U.S. military base in Greenland, Canadian study says

Pollutants unearthed at Camp Century could be released into the local ecosystem and circulate downstream to other countries, including Canada.

The base was built eight metres under the ice, and when it was abandoned, the U.S. military thought it would remain entombed. (Marco Tedesco / Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory File Photo)

By Michelle McQuiggeThe Canadian Press

Thu., Aug. 4, 2016

An abandoned U.S. military base thought to be entombed under the ice of Greenland will likely be exposed by the end of the century, a Canadian-led research team said Thursday.

A study spearheaded by York University found that ice melt at the site around Camp Century is due to eclipse net snowfall over the next 75 years.

The finding flies in the face of the U.S. military’s plan for the base, which it decommissioned in the 1960s and left nearly fully intact under the assumption that it would be buried forever under accumulated snowfall.

Camp Century was established in 1959 in part to test the feasibility of deploying missiles in the Arctic, which represented the shortest route between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.

Situated about 200 kilometres inland from the Greenland coast and built eight metres under the ice, the camp was powered by a nuclear generator and could house up to 200 soldiers at a time.

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The need for Arctic missiles diminished with the advent of more advanced technology, and the project was ultimately abandoned in 1967. But lead researcher William Colgan said the military did not take many active steps to take the base out of commission.

Mother Nature, they thought, would do much of the work for them by continually adding layers of snow over the site and essentially burying it under the ice sheet.

“When it reached end of life, the army just closed the doors on it and left everything in place,” Colgan said in a telephone interview.

“They did take out the nuclear reaction vessel, but they left everything else in place. Buildings, trucks, supplies, waste, all of it. They thought it would snow forever.”

Colgan said the military’s approach had a sound theoretical basis at the time Camp Century was built, though scientists might have had cause to consider other options by the time the base was decommissioned.

Ice core samples taken while the camp was operational were among the earliest evidence of a warming trend in Arctic ice, he said, describing those early results as one of the initial building blocks of modern-day climate change research.

But those results could not have prepared scientists for the pace at which climate change has accelerated, Colgan said, adding the current melting levels in the area will reveal the camp and all its waste materials by the end of the century.

Once exposed, the pollutants unearthed at Camp Century could then be released into the local ecosystem and circulate downstream to other countries, including Canada.

Colgan said the environmental impact is not especially significant, but thinks the fate of the base could have more important political implications.

Countries with abandoned military facilities in the area may find themselves in violation of disposal agreements through no fault of their own, he said, because rapidly melting ice has resulted in the waste being exposed.

He said it will be particularly important to be sensitive to the concerns of Greenland, which has 20 abandoned bases in the area already and is a critical hub for Arctic research.

“NATO allies really need to demonstrate that they have good closure plans to deal with their legacies of abandoned bases,” he said.

“We’re adding further motivation for more comprehensive discussion of what to do with these abandoned bases in Greenland.”

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